(JWR) ---- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com)
JACK DEMPSEY ONCE SAID that nobody who had any other way of making a living
would become a professional boxer and Joe DiMaggio said that no boy from a
rich family ever made the big leagues.

What will future generations think of us when they look back and see that
ours was the generation of Bart Simpson, Dennis Rodman, Madonna, trash TV,
and gangsta rap? If present trends continue, future generations may not
think at all, so it will be a moot point.

Make no mistake about what we have been doing in the Balkans: We have been
killing people for the sake of political appearances, not because it was
going to accomplish any stated objective.

Texas governor George W. Bush: "The genuine appreciation of a heritage
stands in stark contrast to those who would divide people into groups for
political purposes. There is a trend in this country to put people into
boxes ... There are such boxes all over the world in places like Kosovo,
Bosnia, Rwanda -- and they are human tragedies."

Did you know that it has been more than a decade since Mark McGwire last
hit a triple? Maybe someday, when he is over the hill, some of the home runs
he is hitting now will just be triples.

When General Norman Schwarzkopf was being interviewed on television and
characterized Slobodan Milosevic as a completely untrustworthy liar and a
thoroughly immoral man, letters of protest poured in. Some people who turned
on the program in the middle thought that he was talking about Bill Clinton.

While waiting for my wife to get ready so that we could go out, I told her
that I was pacing back and forth. "That's good exercise," she said.

When will people in the media realize that government is not about the
careers of politicians or the maneuvers of special interest groups -- which
is all that many of them seem to want to talk about? Is it so hard for media
people to inform themselves on the substance of the issues themselves and
the impact of policies on a quarter of a billion Americans who live outside
the Beltway?

Another brilliant message from a school teacher: "I think you are nutso --
What a sick column ... Go into mechanics." Thank heaven she didn't go into
mechanics. Imagine all the cars that would be malfunctioning on the
highways.

One of the scariest things about our times is how easy it is to scare
people and start a political stampede. There are people who could be upset
if they were told that half of all Americans earn less than the median
income -- though of course that is the way median income is defined.

Now that the New York Times has color photos, it has become harder to tell
it from USA Today. However, the big difference is that USA Today has more
columnists who are adults.

Ethnic identity movements are ways of getting rid of minor discomforts by
creating major catastrophes.

One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in
high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that
makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when
in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.

Those who try to lay a guilt trip on all white people for slavery fail to
understand that one slave could cost more than most white people earned all
year. Despite "Gone with the Wind," Tara was definitely the exception --
especially for people named O'Hara.

Schools are quick to blame everyone and everything but themselves for the
failures of American education. To them, every bad teacher is the exception
and every bad parent is the rule.

There are people who go through the motions and people who get the job
done. It is amazing how much work you can accomplish just by hiring the
latter and firing the former.

Within the past month, I have heard the same story from parents of two
different children who are late in talking: The neurologist to whom the
child was taken practically ripped the little boy out of the parent's arms
and immediately began undressing him. Then, when the distressed child failed
to respond to orders to do various things for a test, dire conclusions were
drawn -- all in a matter of minutes.

I don't know if it was the same neurologist in both cases, but I would hate
to think that there are two rotten people like this evaluating little
children.